GA Rebuffs Obama Attacks at Iowa Rally

General Aviation Manufacturers Association president Pete Bunce decried President Obama’s “negative rhetoric” about the GA industry during a rally last month in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “If you go after our customers,” he said, “you go after every one of us.” For months, Obama has assailed the special accelerated depreciation afforded business aircraft–among other capital investments–as a prime example of the type of upper-class tax breaks it wants to eliminate. The industry views saving the provision as critical to driving new aircraft sales in a down market. The Treasury Department estimates that repealing it would raise $3 billion over 10 years, a drop in the bucket compared with this year’s federal budget deficit of more than $1.5 trillion.